The postman had a little surprise again. A thick envelop from the USA containing backing fabric for several quilts among the one I started last week and was short of 1 block! The envelope felt stiff as well as thin so I feared a wrong delivery. But everything was right. The fabric was packed in a vacuum bag and only 2 cm thick.
When unpacked it was exactly wat I ordered: 7 yards of fabric.

28 April 2009

Another OPAM finish. Some time ago an friend in Belgium asked me if I could make some bibs for her first grandchild that was on its way. The baby (a girl) is born and two weeks agon I sent 9 finished bibs and a burb cloth to Belgium. Hope the bear does not scare the baby off.

There was not much to blog about for the last few days because I have been sewing rather much. The two charm packs are turned into a table cloth. Or better: almost turned into a table cloth. Something went wrong when almost finished. Two charm packs make 80 squares. The quilt is made of 9 nine patches which means 81 squares. So one square short. I found out when making the last row of blocks. Yes, I know stupid of me. I should have thought of that before I started. But fortunately I needed to order backing material for my SBS quilt and saw that the web shop also sold Moda Charisma. So I ordered that backing as well and it is big enough th cut off a little piece for the last block. Pffft that went well after all. Hope it will arrive soon. I want to finish it for this month's OPAM challenge.Because I couldn't finish that table cloth I decided to sew a charity quilt for a boy. That went so well that made a larger top for a teenager. Except for the border the quilt top is finished. Of course something went wrong again. As a backing I want to use a fleece blanket. Soft and warm. So I laid out the top and blanket to decide the width of the border...........and discovered that the fleece blanket was at least 10 cm shorter dan the top. Arrggg... now I have to go to the shops tomorrow to find the right size fleece blanket.

Yesterday we had our girl's night out with our quilting group. I't is tradition to celebrate our member's birthday with a dinner. It was Ankie's and my turn yesterday. Our birthdays are weeks in the past by now but it is difficult to plan because everyone is so busy and some of the girls still have a job. We had a good time again and the food was delicious.
Above a pic of the whole group and a pic of the birthday girls. The person at the left is me.

15 April 2009

Vandaag een envelop met zelf gekochte cadeautjes uit Amerika ontvangen.
Drie back issues van American Patchwork and Quilting en 2 charmpakketjes van Moda. Ik heb me vanvond niet verveeld!
Today the mailman brought an envelope with self bought presents from the USA. Three back issues from BHG American Patchwork and Quilting and two Moda charm packs. Books and fabric are a quilter's best friends....
I guess you know what I have been doing all evening!

WIVSP......Work In VERY Slow Progress! This morning when looking for a quilt magazine somewhere hidden in my sewing room I came across this white box with a hidden treasure. My mushroom quilt in progress! It must be about 3 years ago that I started it because I wanted to do something by hand in the evenings. But since I am doing so many nice projects by hand in the evening nowadays I forgot all about this project though I must have tripped over the box several times because it was clearly there, not hidden. So maybe I'll take it up for an evening a week..... I could do it by machine but the stitches would be visible. I prefer invisible stitches, a kind of applique. After not seeing it for quite some time I like it again. I found the pattern in a book after a few scrap (15 x 15 cm) swaps and did not really know what to do with the scraps. Now I have to look through my books to find the template again. Think it was from Better Homes and Gardens.

As long as I can remember I have hated the color brown. Brown clothing, brown material, brown knitting wool I don't like it. Though there is shade of brown I do like and that tends to taupe, a bit of cocoa powder brown. This color is found in my wardrobe. Autumn brown with a tinge of orange in it is OK too. My dislike of brown is also the reason that I want to get rid of the brown Civil War fabric. I use them in some blocks, but the remaining fabric I would like to swap for a better CW color.

While having a round through our garden this week I saw more brown that I didn't like. Our beautiful Leicesterias (we had 2 of those) and the Ceanothus didn't make it through the cold winter we had. They can endure temperatures to -10C but we had some cold nights with -23C. It is a pity. The pics above show them as they were last summer and how they look now. T first two pics are of the Leicesteria and the second two are of the Ceanothus. Such a pity.